07/23/2023
Apparently, English is the world’s seventh biggest language containing 578, 707 headwords; little wonder really since its ingredients include most Western European languages, especially German and French, plus all kinds of words plundered from the lands of the British Empire, public school Latin – even Welsh, Irish and Scottish – Yiddish too, and it doesn’t stop there because sometimes people invent language to avoid being understood; one of the alleged purposes of London’s East End Rhyming Slang was to confuse the police: The real word, say ‘head’, becomes a phrase that rhymes with it ‘loaf of bread’, of which the first word is used, so ‘loaf’ means ‘head’ – consider also ‘Mincers’, ‘North’ and ‘Hampsteads’ – before we even go below the collar.
It didn’t start there of course – Rhyming Slang seems to have begun in the early Nineteenth Century, but the ‘Polari’ slang of actors, circus folk and fairground families, professional wrestlers, merchant sailors, s*x workers and, particularly, gay subculture may be rooted as far back as the Sixteenth Century. Polari was thrust into the popular spotlight by Julian and Sandy in the radio show ‘Round the Horne’ in the 1960s and, with increased gay liberation, use of Polari declined, though words like ‘Rozzer’ (policeman), ‘Naff’ (shoddy) and ‘Khazi’ (toilet) stand at least on the edge of mainstream.
Thieves’ Cant, apparently one of the roots of Polari, is even older, with the first written records of it in 1536 – implying that it was well-established by then – by the 1590s, interest in underworld culture became quite fashionable (including city comedy plays at the playhouses – Shakespeare’s being Comedy of Errors - some of the plots are very similar to episodes of Only Fools and Horses) and some Thieves’ Cant words have survived too – ‘cove’ for man, ‘cully’ for victim, ‘bung’ for ‘purse’ has shifted to mean bribe, a ‘fence’ is still a dealer in stolen goods, and ‘booze’ still booze. ‘Scuttle’ still means ‘run away quickly’, as does ‘Scarper’, though that is rhyming slang: Scapa Flow = ‘go’.
Follow us on Instagram
